


Is this Fate?

by CaptainErica



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fate, almost soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 02:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13672353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainErica/pseuds/CaptainErica
Summary: Something pulls her to him, catches her eyes and makes it impossible for her to stop looking, stop wondering, stop thinking...





	Is this Fate?

_I have always known you._

It was one of those days that seemed never to end but then ended so quickly that you found yourself uncertain what had even happened. Hermione hadn’t wanted it to end, though, she’d been perfectly content with it today.

The train ride had been agonizing, but she’d been so excited, so _nervous_ that she couldn’t stay still. She was really doing it, she’d thought, really going to Hogwarts; a school for witches and wizards like herself. She saw him, then, for the very first time.

Him, he, Draco Malfoy. The boy who introduced himself last name first like she even cared or knew who his family was (she did, though, she knew of the Malfoys, and she was wary). When he didn’t recognize her surname, his demeanor had changed; subtle but obvious all at once. He was judging her for something she could not control…

And she felt sorry for him. A great, sudden well of sadness that bubbled up out of nowhere and overcame her for just a moment. He wasn’t rude, then, no he just seemed disappointed; severely disappointed. It was re-enforced by his two large henchboys, and she wonders how he would have reacted had they not been there.

_You wait in the dark recesses of my mind, always watching, always patient._

In second year, as in the first, her friends were in danger, _Harry_ was in danger. It was bigger than that, _more_ than that, and she had so much on her plate before… rather suddenly she was petrified and couldn’t do much of anything (there was someone there, though, visiting, replacing the flowers that Harry and Ron were never diligent enough to remember).

Hermione’d known the year wasn’t going to go _normally_ , whatever that meant, as soon as she walked into Flourish and Blotts. There was a different energy in the store, and it wasn’t just because of Gilderoy Lockhart ( _swoon_ ). There was something a little foreboding, a little malevolent, running through the air, and she was proven right when they’d turned to leave and found Draco Malfoy in their paths. The way he’d looked at her was impossible to understand; she was too young to have seen so many emotions in one look.

There was one thought that struck her, strangely giddy as it was, as she left that confrontation: he talks about me.

 _I have known you since before you were born, before you existed, before there was_ us.

Hermione was disgusted with him, with Draco Malfoy. She felt for him, had from the start. She could see that there was something else behind his actions, his words… the way he looked at her when he thought she wouldn’t know, the way she _knew_ he talked about her (about how smart she was, how good she is at magic…). But she also knew he was a coward and a sneak and currently a little bully whose father would indulge him to the ends of the earth.

“You _foul, loathsome, evil, little_ cockroach!”

And she felt it as she said it, felt her confusion over his attentions, over the way he used a slur against her and never felt any repercussions (her cousin said she should tell on him, and she _should_ but maybe Harry is rubbing off on her, because maybe that’s what Draco needs: to be held accountable for his words and actions). Draco was scared, she could see it clearly on his face, but underneath that was admiration and a warm depth that was the real reason she originally thought she could back off.

But she couldn’t, she couldn’t let him get away with _this_ without a consequence. So with every ounce of dignity and muscle she had… she punched him square in the nose.

_You are waiting for me, just as I am waiting for you. Give me time, I will grow. There is so much more to me than this._

Draco Malfoy had tried to save her.

Harry and Ron were dense at the best of times, but it was there rather plainly: Draco had warned them, urged them to get her out of there before she could be caught. Did Hermione believe the Death Eaters were actually after her?

Logically speaking: they should be.

She’s best friends with Harry Potter and a Weasley, and she’s not certain that there is anything they hate more than those two things (aside from muggles, aside from _her_ ). If she had just been a student, a regular, simple student out to see the game, then they wouldn’t know about her. But Draco Malfoy talks big, and he talks about _Hermione Granger, the muggleborn girl who’s better than him in all their classes._

And Draco Malfoy’s father is _absolutely_ a Death Eater.

Ginny thought that Draco could have been nicer about it, but Hermione argues that Draco had never been _nice_ about anything in his life, so why would he start then?

 _I am not perfect, but I can grow. I_ will _grow, for you, because of you._

Hermione was fairly convinced that Draco Malfoy was an idiot. Ginny agreed rather whole-heartedly on that point; Harry and Ron felt the same but it was with completely different connotations so she ignored them.

He didn’t know what he wanted, and that’s really the problem. He had _no idea_ what his actions were causing and… and she could barely find it in her to be angry with him, knew Harry couldn’t either because there was so much _else_ going on. But his association with Umbridge… There was nothing redeeming about Draco Malfoy this year, and Hermione was surprised at the end to realize she had been looking for something. Not even the way his eyes tracked over her in classes, in the Great Hall, when they passed each other… not even those things could register for her this year…

Though…

_I’ve seen you in my dreams lately, you’re more present than usual, more forward. It’s because you know, don’t you? You know what’s happening to me, with me, around me._

Draco Malfoy is beaten and subdued. He hasn’t been physically touched, but he doesn’t need to have been for it to come across as it does. Hermione was a little horrified, tried to pull Harry’s attention away from him (but is that the best thing to do?)…

Hermione doesn’t pity Malfoy. She doesn’t for a large number of reasons that she couldn’t name all of if asked, but mainly she doesn’t because pity is a waste and unhelpful. Instead she’s enraged for him, for all of the students and people being used and manipulated and made to do things that they do not understand. She understands, at the end of the year when it’s all fallen apart around them and everything she’d been led to believe is slowly being torn down, that there is more to everything and everyone than she had originally thought.

She doesn’t see Draco Malfoy the night he flees (is led off, really, if the calmer version of events is to be believed), but she didn’t need to to know how he must have looked. Harry got calmer in his story eventually, his emotionally charged retelling softening over time and allowing details to flow through (‘he didn’t want to, Hermione, he just didn’t want to die’).

_You know me, you know all of me, all about me, and I’m unworthy of you._

The battle was terrible, and Hermione’s heart was heavy, and her head was sore, and she wasn’t ready for all of the feelings…

She wasn’t ready for the deaths, and the families, and the deep, scarring emotions.

She wasn’t ready to turn her head and see the Malfoys, curled together on a table, out of the way and trying to be unobtrusive. Victims, she thinks, victims of a flawed system and an equally flawed belief system and… And she feels for them, or at least for Draco who had been affected the most by this, who had been the biggest victim of it all.

He catches her eye as she looks over at them, face drawn and sad and worried… and she knows that he’ll rebuild himself after this, that he’ll be a better man after this. She gives him a tiny smile, all that she can muster in this horrible gloom. He doesn’t return it, but she didn’t need him to.

_I am waiting for you. I see you in my dreams; you lurk in the dark recesses of my mind._

When Hermione signed up to do her seventh year, late as it ended up being, she didn’t expect It to be like this.

Not that it’s anything _bad_ or truly _strange_ , just that she hadn’t expected Draco Malfoy to feature quite so heavily in her day to day life. She had many classes with him, they shared time in the library, and early mornings in the Great Hall. They made eye contact across the library, both clearly working on the same assignment, and bumped shoulders in the halls, on the way to the same classes.

“Alright, Malfoy?” She asks, just before Christmas holidays.

He smiles at her, a small little upturn of his lips, cocky and simple and somehow flattered all at once. “Alright, and you, Granger?” He asks, and she grins at him, book bag hugged to her chest, and nods.

“Alright.”

_I know you, have known you, since the beginning of time._

 It’s odd, Hermione thinks as she leans her elbow against the table at Florean Fortescue’s, the brightly colored umbrella shading her from the hot summer sun, but she kind of misses the chaos. Or, more truthfully, she misses being useful in ways that weren’t just her name, her relation to Harry and the Order of the Phoenix.

“Ronald asked after you before I left.” Ginny says, leaning back in her chair, ice cream cone held lazily in one hand, sundress a tad ratty, but she wears it like she’s always worn everything: as if it’s just another part of her skin.

Hermione sighs, shifting slightly, eyes catching on a flash of brilliantly blond hair in the distance. “Was he wondering after my parents?” She asks, skirting the topic, spoon playing in the ice cream in her bowl. “I told he and Harry in the letters I sent that things were going well; not perfectly, but well.” She adds.

Ginny hums, shifting to sit up a little more and then leaning over the table, hand and cone held off to the side, and gives Hermione a Look. “No, he can read.” She says, just a tad sassy. “What he wanted to know was if you were dating. It’s been 3 months since you left for Australia.”

Hermione rolls her eyes, taking a bite, eyes flickering between Ginny and the blond hair she can see at the window of the store across the street. “You know, he asked if I was going to see Viktor while I was away.” She says, doesn’t answer the question, doesn’t need to, because Ginny knows the answer.

“While you were going to find your parents? What rubbish.” She says, sighing and shaking her head. “He’s not enjoying the ministry, which I’m sure you know, been helping George…”

Later in the day is when she actually runs into him. She and Ginny had decided to leave the ice cream parlor after a little while, opting for a walk through the bustling streets and then a quick visit to the bookstore.

She recognizes him by his hair, bright and almost glowing despite the soft lighting and the high shelves that block all light this far back in the store. “Malfoy?!” She says, almost shocked as she’d turned around a shelf and practically run into him.

“Granger.” He says, a soft, amused smile lighting upon his lips. His eyes drag down very briefly, then catch hers. “It’s been a while.”

She shakes her head, just a little. “It has, yes.” She tilts her head a little, considering him, “Doing well?”

The answer, she knows and is then informed, is a solid possibly, though he could be better. There are a few moments of silence, but then he nods to her, and she to him, and his little smile is back (insufferable) and he leaves her there between the shelves. She has questions, as is always the case when she ends an interaction with him, but it could be worse, she supposes; she could have butterflies.

_And yet…_

There is a lot in this world that Hermione does not understand. There is a lot that she does not believe in, and a lot that she does not put much stock in, but mostly; she doesn’t understand, and she’s working to make the list of things she does not understand shorter.

One of the biggest mysteries to her, and one that both Ginny and now Harry are trying to get her to just _accept_ is fate.

Fate.

It doesn’t make sense, she’s argued countless times, it doesn’t make sense that there are things that are meant to be, but yet…

But yet she saw all of the prophecies in the Department of Mysteries, saw the proof that _someone_ believes in fate and prophecies and the almost nauseating potential for everything to have already been mapped out. But she had a hard time believing that her whole life had led to this, to her standing here.

To her holding out a hand to Draco Malfoy, a smile on her lips and butterflies in her stomach, waiting for him to get over his shock and agree to dance with her.

It feels _right_ when he takes her hand, face almost a complete mask (she can see it, the nervous energy, the worry, the self-doubt, the scared little boy, the boy who didn’t know…). She hates how right it feels, because that’s one more point on the chalkboard of things she doesn’t understand, and one more point for Harry and Ginny, who keep a tally of these things for their own amusement.

“It almost feels like I’ve been waiting forever for this kind of moment.” Draco says, and Hermione must admit that she agrees, feels the same, and that’s another point for both tallies, and maybe…

Maybe Draco knows more about this _fate_ business, maybe he understands that subtle art that Hermione just can’t reconcile with reality (it all felt rather self-fulfilling, didn’t it? Especially Harry’s prophesy…).

Hermione didn’t understand it, doesn’t think she should have to. So she’ll wait for now, and let Harry and Ginny have their points, and let Ginny tell her ‘I told you so’ as gleefully and as often as she would like. Because the world is strange, and so is life, and…

**Author's Note:**

> Not my best, but now I want more Ginny fic, so.


End file.
